What's wrong with Fraser dingoes?

It is a question many are asking, with once unheard of dingo attacks, one of them fatal, becoming increasingly common and a government that insists that the policy coinciding with these attacks is working.

Under previous Forestry Department management regimes, as illustrated by this photograph (right) of an old Forestry warning sign, dingoes routinely ate the garbage of visitors.

Land owners and Forestry workers fed them and knew them by name, many had pups under people’s houses and there were no attacks.

Now, it is officially argued that feeding dingoes and interacting with them causes them to become dangerous because they lose their “fear” of humans.

And a swag of government-paid experts agree.

So does the RSPCA, which says the government’s Fraser Island Dingo Management Strategy has as its primary objective “to protect and manage the Fraser Island dingo and provide an alternative to further mass scale culling of the animal in the interest of preserving the species in the wild”.

Its official position on the strategy states that the organisation “recognises the necessity for appropriate, government-regulated management of wild populations of animals” and says there is “not sufficient evidence to support a charge of cruelty against dingoes,” despite a policy which includes driving them from feeding areas, especially beaches, by “hazing” them (shooting with shanghais) and euthanasing animals which have done little more than behave like dogs.

Minister Kate Jones said she has seen no evidence that dingoes are starving on the island, despite having been sent photos like those published on these pages.

The RSPCA said that even if the dingoes are starving, they are owed no duty of care under law because they are wild animals.

Fraser Island Dingo Preservation Group member Bree Jashin said one pup was euthanased for “scratching someone on the back of their calf”.

The Victorian Dingo Preservation and Recovery Program’s Dr Ian Gunn says the dingo must be preserved.

Research showing the genetic significance of the dingo means “it is now clear that they must be preserved as an animal of international cultural significance,” Dr Gunn says.

The Fraser Coast based Save the Fraser Island Dingo group says the government’s policies have failed.